Welcome to the Forum Archive!

Years of conversation fill a ton of digital pages, and we've kept all of it accessible to browse or copy over. Whether you're looking for reveal articles for older champions, or the first time that Rammus rolled into an "OK" thread, or anything in between, you can find it here. When you're finished, check out the boards to join in the latest League of Legends discussions.

Ahri or Morgana

Ability to safely push bottom against the most vicious of laners and do fine.
Ability to safely push bottom without dying every time a gank happens. Send 2 people after Yorick or especially Heimer and they're toast.
Ability to push out of lane anyone that's NOT the most vicious of laners.
Anti-CC shield that can REALLY augment the ability of certain champions.
Ability to ditch bottom and jump into the fray with her strong AoE ult and MR debuff, and particular potency when guarding a turret.
Capacity to build both strong AP and strong resistances to become surprisingly tough.

This logic is so bad I don't know where to begin. The good sustain is QUITE relevant because it means she can KEEP UP with said bot laners. WITHOUT said sustain she'd be a significantly weaker bottom laner, but alas she can easily begin to tank minion waves and stay at 100% as soon as she builds a little damage. At worst, most opponents can only hope to stalemate against her in lane unless they can attempt to kill her on her own turret (Which is a fantastic way to get ulted and die).

While I'll admit that the CD on her ult leaves a bit to be desired, when it's ready she can RAPE a 3v3 fight, because of the comparative ease with which Morgana can obtain a Rabadon's and a tanky AP item like Zhonyas or Abyssal Scepter. With said items, her ability to jump into the fray and not get instantly melted down makes said ult FAR more reliable and easier to use. I mained Morg in SR before I started playing Dom and one of the biggest problems you'd end up encountering with her was having the right moment to actually get in and ult more than a couple of front liners, because one mistake meant you were toast unless you were REALLY having a good game and had an even remotely comparable item loadout than what you'd typically have in Dom.

i'll try Bot laning with morg and see how she is late game. But i would like to try a 1v1 with u vs my Ahri and see how well Morg dominates bottom lane. The Morgs Ive beat might be bad but i don't know how a better player would do anything.

Morgana can "Fill" either of these roles when no one else wants to. Her Spellvamp and Soil make her a solid Bot pusher, and her Shield can hard-counters some very common bots (I'm looking at you Malz). She can also take over Bot when say... Skarner just abandon's it because he can't take being 0/7 against Swain.

Arhi, while being "ok" at bot, has a much harder time taking up once the game has started. Morgana's Spellvamp makes her "good" in bot no matter how you build/spec. If you stacked fatty AP, and then find out Yorick thinks "me going top". You can hold bot and build up more tanky/CDR items later and just rely on your natural vamp to keep you in the game. Arhi, from my experience, has to decide from the selection screen she is going bot. And take a more defensive spec.

Morgana has Much stronger range, and is generally more "Meaty" than Ahri. Additionally she can "one-shot" a near infinitly large creep wave with a single soil. This makes her and Ideal defender. And again, if you're looking to fill holes in typical play, you sometimes need a champ who can hold off a 2v1 or 3v1 + creep wave in the top. While people get back from their death in mid.

My problem with Morgana is she isn't a "Hero". In Dominon you really want a team of 5 Heros. Its inevitable, that even with near perfect 5-person-in-vent style co-ordination, people find themselves alone in the woods and have to fight a solo battle (for some amount of time). This obviously happens much more frequently as co-ordination is tossed to the wind. Morgan can't easily capitalize on out of possision enemies, and she's even worse when it comes to being caught off-guard away from the team. On the other hand Ahri has a great Kit when it comes to either Fight or Flight. In that she has both incredible burst AND an amazing escape. (and as a side note, Foxfire applies Rylia's slow, so its an amazing tool for escaping the melee jump because you can slow them while not facing them and not interrupting your run).

And that's really the crux of my point. That if the first 4 people on your team are: Walker Texas Ranger, Batman, The Bride, and Stephen Colbert - you're much better off as Captain Kirk than Picard.

What you seem to be viewing as a weakness can also be a great strength. Saying that a character is "useless" inbetween their cooldowns can be misleading when you can easily say it's a STRENGTH to be able to exert almost all of your combat effectiveness in a single spamming moment and then take 8-12 seconds to freely do anything else. For example, if if my ult isn't up, and I'm involved in a team turret assault situation, one of my favorite things to do is quickly spam all of my spells and then focus on capping while they're on cooldown, upon which I'm both helping my team cap AND neutralizing a turret's DPS. Not so "useless" in such an instance, is she? It's also worth noting that being "useless" inbetween cooldowns is a feature of almost every ability-focused character.

Not so useless in such an instance? You can do that with any champion. Since, in this instance, you're diving a turret, the enemy champion is right there and can simply interupt you(some more easily than others) 90% of the time. Now what? You're back to being useless with your long cds for 7-8 more seconds. What happens when a typically strong mage like Ryze forces the enemy to take focus off the one person that's diving them to interupt Ryze's cap? He get's hit with Ryze's QWQEQ while Ryze's teammate is now holding the tower. And then when he switches focus back to Ryze's teammate? Ryze is holding the tower. TLDR: Having long cds is **never** a benefit, and this scenario you've constructed where you can spend all twelve seconds capping the tower with out being interupted is rare to say the least. Furthermore not every fight happens on a turret(please don't tell me you think every single one should be).

Quote:

Hurrikane Hektor:

I'm not gonna try to argue whether or not Ahri is more effective, she may very well be she's a scary champ, but you're slightly wrong about these parts regarding Morg, imo. The smaller fights on Dominion make it much more feasible for her to jump into the middle of fights without being instantly melted for trying. Once you've got a deathcap and a tanky AP item (Zhonya's works really well here), Morg can fairly reliably get into the mix of things esp if a bunch of tanky dps try to jump on top of you and you can pop your hourglass (of course that same hourglass can be used to stuff up YOUR ult). Against those very bruisers she's able to do an AoE slow then stun, which the DPS on YOUR team can then capitalize upon. I don't think she's as vulnerable to the bruisers constantly running around Dom as you think.

It could be that I just handle Morgana really well, since people that are not used to seeing her fall prey to my expertise, but I seem to kick a **** ton of ass with her, and appear to have a trick for pretty much anything the enemy tries to use against me.

Morg's R is what it is on SR, an AOE disruption spell, an aoe slow that forces the the enemy team to retreat and split to avoid being stunned then bound. Typically on SR you start it on 3-4 people and you can only get the stun off on one or two due to players splitting, especially if you Zhonyas to cut your mobility. During this time your team(other 4 people) are meant to rip up those 3-4 that are fleeing, this is what makes Morg strong. However in dominion with smaller skirmishes you're fighting and ulting 1-3 people with you rarely stunning two, three would be amazing, given the average fight. Your team, and their's, is more highly comprised of more tanky champions than SR. Whats this mean? It means that during that 2-3 seconds of disruption(aoe slow + dispersion of champions) your team isn't doing as much damage as they would on SR and they're much more able to tank any damage taken.

This is one of the same reasons champions like Akali falls off in dominion. Akali excells at assassinating squishy targets and being very mobile. While this is great on SR, due to there always being at least 3 squishy targets(AD/Support/AP), when she has to deal with Lee Sin Jarvan WW Shen constantly she's not going to burst anyone down and she's not going to be very mobile. Just as Morgana excells at enabling her high damage teammates to safely do damage while disrupting the other team's front line, in dominion she's enabling for fewer teammates and bruisers at that, then being useless and squishy. It doesn't exactly play out the same way. In SR people are dead after her ult and she can carry on supporting her team. In dominion, due to the lower damage output during her ults duration, they're not and bruisers > her.

Realistically , the main reason why morgana isn't great on Dominion is cuz her Spell cool-downs are too long for how effective/efficient her spells are on DOMINION. This is due to the fact that if your solo queuing MOST (keyword is MOST) randoms wont follow up after a bind or use your shield effectively due to lack of communication. The only good thing i can possibly think that morgana is good for is farming bot and getting high AP to help mid-late game and hopefully by late game it isn't too late. If your playing with friends on vent/skype then i could see morgana doing pretty well depending on who your facing and/or what your team comp. is.

Not so useless in such an instance? You can do that with any champion.

That doesn't make it a good idea. If you're playing a champion that relies on constantly spamming spells (Ryze/Cass) or doing sustained DPS (Jax/AD Sion), then you can't make efficient use of "downtime" by capping a turret.

Quote:

Since, in this instance, you're diving a turret, the enemy champion is right there and can simply interupt you(some more easily than others) 90% of the time.

Depends on the situation. If you position yourself a bit of distance away from the enemy (especially if it's a melee champion without a gap closer on CD), you can force them to spend a second or two dealing with you while your teammates are messing them up. And in the process, you can still often shave off a turret attack which always helps.

Quote:

A bunch of stuff about Ryze and turrets.

Ryze is a bit more of a spammy caster, see what I said above. He doesn't always have really big breaks inbetween his spells, therefore isn't as suited to sitting and capping a turret as someone who can launch all of their stuff off and have a bit of a cooldown inbetween them (Brand is another example of this, and he also seems to do well on Dom. That ult in small 2v2/3v3 fights man....). It's also worth noting that if you buy the CDR boots or get a Deathfire Grasp like I commonly do, her binding and torment soil cds are only 8-9 seconds long, so you're not spending THAT much time idle. Also, depending on how you placed your tormented soil, forcing the enemy to come over and interrupt your cap can be inviting them onto that very spell. While anyone can do it, casters with notable CD gaps are especially suited to it because there's nothing else besides positioning they could otherwise be doing.

Quote:

Morg's R is what it is on SR, an AOE disruption spell, an aoe slow that forces the the enemy team to retreat and split to avoid being stunned then bound. Typically on SR you start it on 3-4 people and you can only get the stun off on one or two due to players splitting, especially if you Zhonyas to cut your mobility. During this time your team(other 4 people) are meant to rip up those 3-4 that are fleeing...

I'm a bit of a history guy. Do you like history? Let me tell you what, historically, tends to happen to an army when it tries to retreat with an enemy army in it's face: They get slaughtered. Now, while it's true that tanky dps aren't as easily slaughtered as glass cannon carries and such, if you give a Kog Maw (Eater of all things that consider themselves "tanky&quot, Wukong, Jax, and say a Lux all that time to bear down on the enemy while they're scrambling for their lives, I can guarantee at LEAST one of them is going to be dead, which grants you an immediate advantage. And if they jumped on you SO BAD that you felt the need to pop your hourglass, they had better hope they have flash because by that point it's probably too late to escape.

Quote:

...then being useless and squishy...

With the rune setup I use, zhonyas, abyssal scepter, and rabadons, you have a big shield with 100 some odd MR and 140 armor backing it up, on top of 200 hp from your lovely prospector's ring. It's by no means a tank, but also hardly anything "squishy". Imo she needs a bit of toughness to reliably use her ult.

Quote:

If your playing with friends on vent/skype then i could see morgana doing pretty well depending on who your facing and/or what your team comp. is.

This is one of the criticisms I would readily put against Morgana myself. She's a bit sensitive to team composition on both your side and theirs, and a bit reliant on having teammates ready to capitalize on her abilities. But, I also never play her when I don't have at least my bro playing with me.

Quote:

Realistically , the main reason why morgana isn't great on Dominion is cuz her Spell cool-downs are too long for how effective/efficient her spells are on DOMINION.

Perhaps. I'm more confident in saying that she's good but perhaps not GREAT, given team synergization. I'm fully willing to admit she's probably a bad idea when playing with randoms in blind pick.

That doesn't make it a good idea. If you're playing a champion that relies on constantly spamming spells (Ryze/Cass) or doing sustained DPS (Jax/AD Sion), then you can't make efficient use of "downtime" by capping a turret.

Depends on the situation. If you position yourself a bit of distance away from the enemy (especially if it's a melee champion without a gap closer on CD), you can force them to spend a second or two dealing with you while your teammates are messing them up. And in the process, you can still often shave off a turret attack which always helps.

Ryze is a bit more of a spammy caster, see what I said above. He doesn't always have really big breaks inbetween his spells, therefore isn't as suited to sitting and capping a turret as someone who can launch all of their stuff off and have a bit of a cooldown inbetween them (Brand is another example of this, and he also seems to do well on Dom. That ult in small 2v2/3v3 fights man....). It's also worth noting that if you buy the CDR boots or get a Deathfire Grasp like I commonly do, her binding and torment soil cds are only 8-9 seconds long, so you're not spending THAT much time idle. Also, depending on how you placed your tormented soil, forcing the enemy to come over and interrupt your cap can be inviting them onto that very spell. While anyone can do it, casters with notable CD gaps are especially suited to it because there's nothing else besides positioning they could otherwise be doing.

I'm a bit of a history guy. Do you like history? Let me tell you what, historically, tends to happen to an army when it tries to retreat with an enemy army in it's face: They get slaughtered. Now, while it's true that tanky dps aren't as easily slaughtered as glass cannon carries and such, if you give a Kog Maw (Eater of all things that consider themselves "tanky&quot, Wukong, Jax, and say a Lux all that time to bear down on the enemy while they're scrambling for their lives, I can guarantee at LEAST one of them is going to be dead, which grants you an immediate advantage. And if they jumped on you SO BAD that you felt the need to pop your hourglass, they had better hope they have flash because by that point it's probably too late to escape.

With the rune setup I use, zhonyas, abyssal scepter, and rabadons, you have a big shield with 100 some odd MR and 140 armor backing it up, on top of 200 hp from your lovely prospector's ring. It's by no means a tank, but also hardly anything "squishy". Imo she needs a bit of toughness to reliably use her ult.

This is one of the criticisms I would readily put against Morgana myself. She's a bit sensitive to team composition on both your side and theirs, and a bit reliant on having teammates ready to capitalize on her abilities. But, I also never play her when I don't have at least my bro playing with me.

Perhaps. I'm more confident in saying that she's good but perhaps not GREAT, given team synergization. I'm fully willing to admit she's probably a bad idea when playing with randoms in blind pick.

I'm sorry if I were to respond to this I would just be repeating myself. No wall of text is going to magically make Morg strong/aboveaverage/viable in Dominion. Subpar champ stays subpar.

my problem when playing morgana is simply killing people. if i get caught in the jungle, i cant really use my ult cause i need it for teamfights, but without it, i cant kill anyone at all. i can only stop them from killing me. its a weird state of forced defensiveness... i dont want to always be defensive but i sort of have to since the cd's r too long to waste spells outside of a teamfight

when playing ahri, my sustain may not be the best, and it may be a bit trickier to get hp back, but i can still do it. and when i want to be offensive, foxfire + ult is a decent amount of burst dmg. my general rule of thumb with ahri is that anyone below half hp and little magic resist, will die whenever i have my ult. theres just nothing they can do about me charging in with foxfire + ult, charming them and landing Q unless they react fast enough to catch me with a stun/silence mid-ult, which is rare.

theres just no reason to play morgana over other mages. if u really need a shield/long ranged stun, play lux.

I'm sorry if I were to respond to this I would just be repeating myself. No wall of text is going to magically make Morg strong/aboveaverage/viable in Dominion. Subpar champ stays subpar.

No snarky little comment is gonna make you right, nor is it going to convince a critical, skeptical mind like mine. At the end of the day, simply talking about it isn't going to prove anything anyway. I'm a man of empiricism as much as I am history, I'll be convinced when top ELO players give using Morgana a serious, earnest effort in high level games and find that she is simply subpar. I'm half-convinced everyone thinks she sucks simply because nobody able to be good with her has taken the chance to fully explore her potential. I remember everyone banning Akali left and right before people realized she could be made a chump, and everyone scrambling to ban Urgot when people realized how much of a terror he was bottom. Meta changes, and I'm willing to bet Morgana just might find her spot in the meta once she's explored properly.

In my own experience of playing against both Morg and Ahri the former pushes a lot faster early on in the game. But there are quite a few champs that can outpush her with a little farm and then go on to completely zone her if they manage to dodge a Binding.

Ahri on the other hand has her 800 AoE aura of '**** you' in the form of Fox Fire. If you try to zone her you're going to be eating little blue fireballs and there's nothing you can do about it. Once she has a little AP Ahri can push just as hard as Morgana can.

Ahri has the added benefit of being basically ungankable due to her Ult, allowing her to push a foe to their Point with virtual impunity. This is a very useful trait to have for a bot-lane champ.